


like grated lemon

by RosePerSomnium



Series: Steter Week 2018 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (Stiles is 14), (but too proud to admit it), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, FTM Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Menstruation, Peter acts all high and mighty but he's not fooling anyone, Peter can deny it all he wants but he's somehow drawn to Stiles, Peter's not thinking straight, Peter's thoughts aren't transphobic but not exactly super respectful of Stiles's gender either, Situational Humiliation, Steter Week 2018, Stiles seems shy at first but is just cautious, Teasing, Trans Stiles Stilinski, excessive use of the sense of smell, hints to innocent flirting, teasing!Peter verges on being hurtful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-11 12:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15315708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosePerSomnium/pseuds/RosePerSomnium
Summary: While chaperoning Cora's backyard party, Peter discovers an unexpected thing or two about himself.





	like grated lemon

**Author's Note:**

> Day two! Totally ignoring today's prompt for reasons. 
> 
> I'm not trans myself and don't know many trans people, so I hope I'm not offending anybody with this fic. It's written from Peter's Point of View who doesn't have any experience with that either and his way of thinking isn't always the most respectful. This may become part of a series which would make him learn more about it alongside me.  
> In any case, please take care of yourself if that could be triggering for you!
> 
> As usual, if you have any suggestions for improvement (grammar, vocab, missing tags or whatever), please let me know!  
> Any kind of comment is greatly appreciated!

Peter smelled blood. He looked up from his papers, scanning the group of teenagers in the backyard. None of them yelled for a band-aid. None of them laughed in mischievous glee. None of them made their way back to the house.

He sniffed the air, and it hit him when the acrid stink of humiliation waved over. Nobody was hurt. But one girl clearly hadn't been expecting her shark week.

Settling back into his chair, he concentrated on his work once again. Embarrassing as it had to be, most of the party guests were girls themselves, so he shouldn't be needed.

It took self-restraint to focus on the case. The typical divorcing-on-awful-terms-and-fighting-about-every-last-tiny-possession was a bothersome chore on good days but usually, he pushed through it in one go. No chance of doing that today. He couldn't wait for challenging cases instead of praise to acknowledge his brilliance. His ego didn't need any stroking, thank you very much.

Bored, he looked over to the backyard again. The mixture of blood and humiliation still hung in the air, but nobody had come up yet.

The boy leading most of the conversations thus far was going at it again. His flailing gestures and enthusiastic talking drew most of the kids in (and a few out, rolling their eyes), so it should have been easy for the girl in question to confide in Cora or any of the others. She had to be shy.  
Well, still not his responsibility. His chaperoning included keeping the teenagers from making foolish decisions and being the responsible adult in case of emergencies, not helping with puberty.

He forced himself to look back at his papers, intending not to get distracted again without good reason. He managed to concentrate for a short while, the boy's rambling fading into a comfortable background noise, like sitting next to a mumbling creek.

However, when a new sudden burst of humiliation hit him, he couldn't resist glancing up. His niece finally seemed to have noticed the smell too and was glancing around. A second later, the entertaining boy excused himself for having to take a piss and walked up to the house at a brisk pace.

Peter perked up, frowning when the scent grew stronger. The boy looked like every other teenager: baggy plaid; short, tousled hair; still baby-faced in a kind of feminine way… Of course. He remembered Cora talking about a new student at the beginning of the school year, a girl who went by a boy's name. It had been a big deal, the first transgender person in their town and the new sheriff's kid on top, but gossip had died down after a while and he had mostly forgotten about it by now.

The boy reached the porch, staring straight ahead.

"Follow me," Peter said and led the way. The boy did, scent spiking again. "I don't think any of my clothes would fit you, but Cora has plenty of boyish ones." The boy didn't answer, not as if he would have expected him to.

He went up to his niece's room, getting a pair of underwear and some shorts, then showed the boy to the girls' bathroom. "There should be stuff in this drawer," he said, pointing, then got a trash bag from the cabinet under the sink and placed it on the counter. "I'll be downstairs if you want a ride home."

With that, he stepped outside and closed the door, big bambi eyes staring at him in confusion until it clicked shut.

As announced, he returned to the back porch where he collected his things and murmured "I gave him some of your stuff" to a concerned looking Cora, dismissing her bafflement at that. He wasn't the caring type. Outside the pack, he rarely cared about anybody. Not that he did about this boy. It was merely an act of… compassion during an incident that could ruin a teenager's life. And kind of his duty as today's chaperone anyway.

Obviously, his niece thought differently because she too excused herself, coming over to confront him with the patented 'this Hale's calling bullshit' look. "Seriously? Subtly leading him to my bathroom wouldn't have been enough?"

Peter raised his eyebrows. "I didn't expect to be reprimanded for helping your friend."

"Yeah, thanks for that, whatever, but what reason did you give him for knowing what's going on?"

"I… didn't. And he didn't ask."

"Of course he didn't, that shit would be humiliating enough for a girl, let alone him." Peter heard the underlying 'duh'.

"Then it should be no problem. He might wonder about it but won't talk to anyone."

"If you say so."

He ignored the long look she gave him. He was aware of his rare display of spontaneity. The kids knew him as the first one to call anybody out on endangering their safety, the one to train them how to stay under the hunters' radar. That was his duty as Talia's left hand. Him stepping out of that persona had to be puzzling for Cora, but he couldn't let her see him equally surprised. She was still too young to stop seeing him as a role model in self-control.

The bathroom door on the second floor opened.

"You should go back to your friends before they suspect something's wrong," he suggested.

It only earned him another baffled frown. "And leave him alone with our male chaperone again? What kind of friend would do that? And he's coming down now anyway."

"I offered to take him home."

Cora narrowed her eyes. "You did?"

The boy stopped in the doorway to the back porch, watching them both like a deer caught in headlights. Cora saved him the embarrassment of having to explain himself. "Hey, don't feel so good?"

The boy nodded.

"Uncle Peter just told me he offered you a ride. Do you want to go with him?"

Another nod.

"Okay. Well, I hope you feel better soon. And if you ever want to talk about anything…"

The boy sent her a small smile and nodded again. "Thanks."

It was the first time he spoke in Peter's presence and now he understood why: He had heard this voice a lot during the party and had related it to the boy because he _saw_ him talking but otherwise, he probably would have thought it was a girl's. It wasn't particularly girly but on the higher side for a boy and most boys at his age were already going through their voice change.

He didn't comment on it, asking him if he was ready to leave instead. When the boy nodded, he sent his niece a stern look. "Don't go overboard while I'm gone."

Cora smiled sweetly at him. "No way, uncle Peter."

"I mean it, Cora. Remember, your friends are regular teenagers."

"I know." She rolled her eyes at him and walked down the stairs. "I'll see you on Monday, Stiles."

Peter gestured for the boy to follow. "Let's go."

In the car, he asked for his address, but the boy only held his hand out for his phone in response. "You realize I heard you talking the whole time, right?" Peter said, even while handing it over. As expected, he got no answer. But he knew the boy wasn't shy by nature. He had been babbling all evening, had an opinion on everything, was usually the first one to start a new topic when conversations ran dry… So shame had to be the boy's reason for staying quiet, probably mixed with the embarrassment of having been caught in such a situation by an older guy.

"Your name is Stiles?" he asked a few minutes later when they got onto the main road. Instead of helping to relax the tension, the boy hunched in on himself and his scent turned sour again.

"I'm not asking for the name on your ID," Peter clarified, "just wondering if Stiles is only a nickname your friends use or the name you chose for yourself."

The boy finally spoke up. "It _is_ a nickname, obviously. But it's also the name I chose and as long as I can't change my name legally…"

"Why Stiles?"

"It's a family nickname. Passed down from father to son. Not that my grandfather had wanted me to inherit it, freak that I am in his eyes, but I didn't notice that as a child."

"So you came out early?"

"Yeah… They didn't really take me seriously in kindergarten but in first grade, I got in trouble every other day for fighting with people who wouldn't respect my gender."

"Couldn't have been easy."

"It wasn't." The boy clenched his hands, making the trash bag rustle. "But this is who I am. I won't let anybody take that away from me. Or anything."

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw him staring at the blood-stained clothes on his lap.

"This doesn't make you any less a boy," he said.

"I know." The boy's heartbeat stayed steady, but Peter still felt his gratitude when he relaxed into his seat, looking at him curiously. "You're not at all like Cora described you."

"Oh?" Peter raised his eyebrows and glanced over. "Do I want to know what she said about me?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "Don't be silly. Everyone knows you're her favorite. She didn't badmouth you, just told us you're not that great with people outside the family and not to take it personally when you're acting like an asshole."

Peter huffed a laugh. "Very flattering. But she's not wrong, I suppose."

"You haven't acted like that toward me at all."

"Must be my generous day." Peter smirked at him.

Abruptly, the boy jerked around to look out of his window. His rapid heartbeat filled Peter's ears, the delicious scent of embarrassed pleasure his nose. He had to remind himself of the boy's age — a good ten years younger than himself, for Christ's sake! — and the boy's gender. He had never been interested in males before, not that he was interested in _Stiles_ , but the boy didn't smell male, his shoulders weren't wide, his hips not narrow, but he wasn't curvy either… Shame overcame him.

The boy had confided in him. He hadn't flirted with him and his body's reactions meant nothing at this age. He himself should know better than this, should _be_ better than this.

"So you've got a strong opinion about some of your teachers?" he asked, trying to keep their conversation going but in safe waters.

It looked like it had worked, as the boy turned his head, taken aback. "Did you work at all or were those papers just camouflage to spy on us undetected?"

"I _did_ work. But your way of talking makes it hard not to notice you."

"Good point. I got in trouble for that too. Lots."

"Meaning you're a troublemaker all around?"

The boy laughed, taking it as the teasing it was supposed to be. "Not intentionally. But yes. My dad could tell you a thing or two about it. Or twenty."

Peter snorted. "I can imagine. Being a sheriff and a single dad to such a son must feel like working two full-time jobs."

"Hey, I'm a delight as a son!" Stiles protested. "I make all the healthy meals he doesn't want, keep him on his toes to find better hiding spots for the sweets he's not supposed to have and I've gotten him new leads for his cases more than once while snooping around."

"He must love that. Especially you getting into confidential cases."

The boy shrugged. "Well, he's trying his best to keep me out… But I think I've got him close to just not caring anymore," he ended with a cheeky grin.

Peter took the turn onto the boy's street, equal parts relieved and annoyed he had to take his eyes off the boy's face for that. It was a nice face to look at. Pretty. Fascinating in its openness. And that grin… He was glad humans couldn't hear heartbeats the way weres could. Or smell pheromones. "Seems like you're not the best influence for Cora, then," he mused.

Stiles snorted. "Are you kidding me? By all accounts, you're the one messing up her parents' efforts to make a nice, well-mannered lady out of her."

Peter couldn't help a smug smile. "She was always a wild one. I'm only helping her preserve it."

"Good job. That's it." Stiles pointed at a house two properties down.

Peter stopped before it and killed the engine. Even so, neither of them moved.

"She's a good one," he said after a moment of silence. "So if you _do_ want to talk to a girl, she would be a reliable option."

"Yeah." Stiles smiled. "She's been a great friend from the start."

"Good."

Stiles reached for the door, hesitating. "I… Thanks. For the help."

Peter looked at him and the same odd protectiveness from earlier overcame him. "You're welcome."

"Well, I'll let you go back to your chaperoning then. And to the important looking work you didn't do."

Peter gave him an annoyed look but didn't bother to object.

Stiles finally opened the door and stepped outside, but bend down to peer back in a second later. "Hey, Peter?"

"Yes?"

"I won't tell anybody you're a big marshmallow on the inside."

"Thank you, Stiles," Peter replied, voice dripping with sarcasm, "for saving my reputation."

The boy grinned. "No problem. Just don't have too many generous days around strangers."

"I won't. Next time we meet I'll make sure to fit better into Cora's description."

Stiles's grin softened, his scent bursting into surprised pleasure waving in through the open door. "Goodnight, Peter. Until next time."

He had slammed the door shut and walked up to the house before Peter could surface from taking in deep breaths of grated lemon.

It was embarrassing. Shameful. And out of character for him but either way, he drove back with his windows rolled up for once. And when he was home, he let Cora know from his room he would be up here if something was wrong. He didn't want her senses on his body reactions.

Peter lay down on his bed fully clothed, imagining an animated voice floating up, flailing gestures and big bambi eyes, shining with intelligence and humor. He couldn't have said if it was a girl or a boy.

 

 


End file.
